Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Emerging technologies in artificial intelligence will make it easier for bad actors to “conceptualize and conduct” chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attacks, according to a report released by the Department of Homeland Security on Monday.

Selected excerpts of the report to President Joe Biden were made public after he signed an executive order three months ago on artificial intelligence.

The lack of regulations in existing U.S. biological and chemical security, combined with the increase in using AI, when combined with the increased use of AI tools “could increase the likelihood of both intentional and unintentional dangerous research outcomes that pose a risk to public health, economic security, or national security,” according to the DHS report.

“The responsible use of AI holds great promise for advancing science, solving urgent and future challenges and improving our national security, but AI also requires that we be prepared to rapidly mitigate the misuse of AI in the development of chemical and biological threats,” said Assistant Secretary for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Mary Ellen Callahan.

“This report highlights the emerging nature of AI technologies, their interplay with chemical and biological research and the associated risks, and provides longer-term objectives around how to ensure safe, secure and trustworthy development and use of AI,” she said.

DHS also said that the diverse approaches of AI developers make it crucial that the U.S. and international partners communicate and harness “AI’s potential for good.”

“The degree to which nation states or groups interested in pursuing these unconventional weapons capabilities will harness such AI tools remains unclear, however, since there are various technical and logistical hurdles that have to be met to develop fully functioning weapons systems that can be used,” Javed Ali, the former senior counterterrorism coordinator on the National Security Council, told ABC News. “That said, it is more likely that AI tools will be more helpful on the research and theoretical design end of the spectrum than the actual manufacture and deployment of such weapons, especially with respect to nuclear weapons.”

A separate DHS report produced by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) last week highlighted that some attacks could be carried out of helped by using AI — including those targeting critical infrastructure.

“It is clear that foreign intelligence services, terrorist groups and criminal organizations have embraced the power of technology and incorporated the use of advanced computing capability into the tactics they use to achieve their illegal objectives,” John Cohen, the former Acting Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis at DHS, said. “Terrorists, criminals and other threat actors can use AI to acquire the instructions on how to develop explosives and other weapons of mass destruction. They can also glean greater insights on potential targets, and on delivery methods to use to achieve the greatest possible disruptive result.”

Last year, the European Parliament approved landmark legislation that aimed to regulate the use of AI and promote “trustworthy” uses.

Last week, the DHS announced the creation of a new AI board that includes 22 representatives from a range of sectors, including software and hardware companies, critical infrastructure operators, public officials, the civil rights community and academia.

Some notable members of the board include: Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI; Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Airlines; Satya Nadella, the chairman and CEO of Microsoft; Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet; and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

The board, according to the agency, will help DHS stay ahead of evolving threats posed by hostile nation-state actors and reinforce national security by helping to deter and prevent those threats.

Cohen, now an ABC News contributor, said the board is a good step, but there is more to be done.

“In many respects, we are using investigative and threat mitigation strategies that were intended to address the threats of yesterday, while those engaged in illegal and threat related activity are using the technologies of today and tomorrow to achieve their objectives,” he said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis met privately with former President Donald Trump in Miami on Sunday morning, multiple sources tell ABC News, marking the latest development in the pair’s rocky relationship following a contentious GOP primary in which Trump won out over DeSantis.

DeSantis requested the meeting with Trump through a mutual contact hoping to “bury the hatchet,” according to one source familiar with the interaction.

Real estate investor Steve Witkoff arranged the meeting, a second source said. DeSantis had breakfast with Trump while he was playing golf.

DeSantis’ office declined to comment; Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request from ABC News.

The Washington Post was first to report the news of the meeting.

The 2024 Republican nominating contest saw Trump, the GOP’s standard-bearer, and DeSantis, a rising conservative star, go after one another directly.

But DeSantis quickly endorsed Trump once he left the race after a distant second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses in January.

“While I’ve had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of [COVID-19 adviser] Anthony Fauci, Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear,” DeSantis said then, to which Trump later responded, “I appreciate that, and I also look forward to working with Ron.”

Earlier this month, DeSantis privately signaled that he planned to fundraise for the former president’s 2024 effort at a donor retreat, a source confirmed to ABC News.

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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is defending a controversial account she shares in a new book about killing her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, in an incident she said was decades ago.

“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20 year old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book — No Going Back,” Noem, who is speculated to be among the leading contenders to be Donald Trump’s choice of a running mate, wrote on X on Sunday.

“The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned,” Noem wrote.

Touting her “years of public service,” including leading her state during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Noem went on to write, “My hope is anyone reading this book will have an understanding that I always work to make the best decisions I can for the people in my life.”

In her new book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” set to be released next week and obtained by ABC News, Noem writes about what led up to her decision to kill Cricket, a wirehair pointer — a choice that has been widely criticized by animal advocates and others as inhumane and excessive. Democrats have also joined the outcry.

In the book, Noem describes the dog as having an “aggressive personality” and being “out of her mind with excitement.”

According to the book, as first reported in The Guardian, things apparently came to a head for Noem, when, on the way home from a pheasant hunt one day, Cricket attacked a family’s group of chickens, acting, she says, like a “trained assassin.”

When Noem eventually got control of the dog, by grabbing her collar, she writes, “She whipped around to bite me.”

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, claiming Cricket was “untrainable.”

“This was my dog and my responsibility, and I would not ask someone else to clean up my mess,” Noem writes. “I stopped the truck in the middle of the yard, got my gun, grabbed Cricket’s leash and led her out into the pasture and down into the gravel pit.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done.”

Noem’s stories of putting animals down don’t end there.

After shooting her dog, Noem writes that she also killed a goat her family owned that she calls “nasty and mean.” She describes the goat as being a “problem for years,” writing that male goats “urinate on their own heads and beards while in rut” and that the specific goat loved to chase her kids, scaring them.

In her book, Noem compares both decisions to put down the animals to a leader needing to make difficult decisions.

“It’s often messy, ugly, and matter-of-fact, dealing with a problem that no one wants to deal with,” she writes, adding, “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”

On Friday, Noem doubled down on X amid backlash over killing her dog.

“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” Noem wrote. “Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

She expanded on her experiences in her statement on Sunday.

“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did,” she wrote.

“Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful,” Noem wrote. “I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor.”

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As protests over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and the treatment of civilians continue at dozens of colleges and universities across the country, the White House says that President Joe Biden respects the right of demonstrators to make their voices heard — peacefully — but “we don’t want to see anybody hurt in the process” as some protests are met with police crackdowns.

“The president knows that there are very strong feelings about the war in Gaza. He understands that, he respects that, and as he has said many times, we certainly respect the right of peaceful protest. People should have the ability to air their views and to share their perspectives publicly, but it has to be peaceful,” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby told ABC News “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

Kirby did sound a warning, though, that some language heard in the mushrooming demonstrations crossed a line with the administration.

“We absolutely condemn the antisemitism language that we’ve heard of late, and we certainly condemn all the hate speech and the threats of violence out there. These protests, we understand they’re important, but they do need to be peaceful,” he said.

Many of the groups behind the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, some of which have turned into ongoing encampments, have denounced antisemitism and sought to distance themselves from any such conduct, saying it’s not representative of their goals or values in calling attention to the civilian toll in Gaza.

The protests have largely been peaceful, according to officials.

There have also been mass arrests, drawing its own criticism, with police accusing some demonstrators of trespassing, resisting arrest and other crimes.

After more than 80 people were detained this weekend at Washington University in St. Louis, the school said in a statement, in part, “We are firmly committed to free expression and allow ample opportunity for voices to be heard on our campus. However, we expect everyone to respect our policies and we will take swift action to enforce them to their fullest extent.”

Pressed about the police response on “This Week,” Kirby told Stephanopoulos: “We’ll leave it to local authorities to determine how these protests are managed, but we want them to be peaceful protests and obviously we don’t want to see anybody hurt in the process of peacefully protesting.”

The demonstrations and the ensuing responses have set off a debate over free speech on college campuses and again elevated domestic tensions around the war in Gaza, which was set off by Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military response, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Kirby said Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be pushing hard for a six-week cease-fire in a trip to the region this week, and the administration hopes that could turn into a more lasting halt to the fighting.

“We want it to last for about six weeks. It will allow for all those hostages [held by Hamas] to get out and, of course, to allow for easier aid access to places in Gaza, particularly up in the north. So, he’s going to be working on that very, very hard,” Kirby said of Blinken.

The White House has been pushing for such a deal for months. An earlier cease-fire agreement, in which Hamas also freed some of the hostages it took on Oct. 7, was briefly in effect late last year.

“What we’re hoping is that after six weeks of a temporary cease-fire, we can maybe get something more enduring in place. We want to see an end to the conflict as soon as possible,” Kirby said on “This Week.”

He also said Blinken intends to learn more about what the Israelis plan to do regarding the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that the country’s forces must go into Rafah as part of the fight against Hamas, though hundreds of thousands of civilians are also thought to be sheltering there.

Kirby conceded on Sunday that while the U.S. will be able to have its say before Israel begins its operations in Rafah, the administration does not have a firm grasp of what the Israeli military’s goals and intentions are.

Stephanopoulos noted that in the event of an invasion of the city, “any prospect of any short-term — of a short ending to the war is completely over.”

“We have to have a better understanding from the Israelis about what they want to do,” Kirby said, adding, “They’ve assured us they won’t go into Rafah until we’ve had a chance to really share our perspectives and concerns with them. So we’ll see where that goes.”

A large-scale incursion of Rafah risks exacerbating a dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with international observers warning of disease and potential famine.

Kirby praised the U.S. military’s building of a pier off the Gaza shore — “probably to two to three weeks” away from operation — to help deliver aid but said nothing would replace increases in distribution of assistance over land routes.

“And I will say that they have been increasing the amount of trucks that have been getting into Gaza,” Kirby said of the Israelis. “Now, there are still challenges on the ground in getting it up into the north, but that’s starting to happen.”

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President Joe Biden tweaked the concerns over his fitness for office and dug at his 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night.

Speaking at a ritzy Washington hotel to politicos and journalists alike, the 81-year-old commander in chief alluded to his past physical stumbles.

“I told her, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just like riding a bike,'” he said at one point, recounting a conversation with first lady Jill Biden about his Saturday speech. “She said, ‘That’s what I’m worried about.'”

Joe Biden also touched on age, set to be a defining issue of this year’s presidential race — but to knock the 77-year-old Trump rather than himself.

“Of course, the 2024 election is in full swing and, yes, age is an issue. I’m a grown man running against a 6-year-old,” Biden quipped. “Well, I feel great. I really feel great.”

“Age is the only thing we have in common. My vice president actually endorses me,” the president added, referencing former Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to endorse his former boss in the wake of Jan. 6.

Biden also touched on Trump’s legal troubles, including his recent appearances in court in New York City over hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair — and, prosecutors claim, to hide the scandal from voters before the 2016 election. Trump denies all wrongdoing.

“I had a great stretch since the State of the Union. But Donald has had a few tough days lately. You might call it ‘stormy weather,'” Biden said.

He used his speech, at times, to also sound a serious note, knocking Trump’s criticism of the press as the “enemy of the people” and vowing to bring home Americans imprisoned abroad, calling out Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, both of whom are held in Russia on charges they and the U.S. deny.

The president concluded by issuing a call to the news media to focus on the “stakes” of the 2024 election, casting Trump as a threat to democracy — a frequent attack that Trump has sought to reverse.

“Move past the horse race numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions, the side shows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics and focus on what’s actually at stake. …The stakes couldn’t be higher,” Biden said. “I have my role, but with all due respect, so do you.”

Trump, for his part, hit back on social media, lambasting the dinner — which he skipped during his time in office, foregoing the customary speech the president also gives — as “really bad” and Biden as an “absolute disaster.”

“Doesn’t get much worse than this!” he wrote.

ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soo Rin Kim and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Kristi Noem is speculated to be among the leading contenders to be Donald Trump’s choice of a running mate.

In her new book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” obtained by ABC News, South Dakota’s Republican governor writes about killing her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, a wirehaired pointer.

Noem describes the dog as having an “aggressive personality” and “was out of her mind with excitement.”

According to the book, and first reported in The Guardian, things apparently came to a head for Noem, when, on the way home from a pheasant hunt, Cricket attacked a family’s group of chickens, acting, she says, like a “trained assassin.”

When Noem said she eventually got control of the dog, by grabbing her collar, she says, “she whipped around to bite me.”

“I hated that dog,” Noem reveals, claiming Cricket was “untrainable.”

“This was my dog and my responsibility, and I would not ask someone else to clean up my mess,” Noem writes. “I stopped the truck in the middle of the yard, got my gun, grabbed Cricket’s leash and led her out into the pasture and down into the gravel pit.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done.”

Noem’s stories of putting animals down don’t end there.

After shooting her dog, Noem says she also killed a goat her family owned that she calls “nasty and mean.” She described the goat as being a “problem for years,” writing that male goats “urinate on their own heads and beards while in rut” and that the specific goat loved to chase her kids, scaring them.

Noem compares both decisions to put down the animals to a leader needing to make difficult decisions.

“it’s often messy, ugly, and matter-of-fact, dealing with a problem that no one wants to deal with,” she writes, adding, “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”

On Friday, Noem doubled down on X amid backlash over killing her dog.

“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” Noem wrote. “Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(AUGUSTA, Maine) — Democratic leaders in Maine are threatening to eliminate the state’s split-vote system for allocating Electoral College delegates if Nebraska Republicans move forward with their plan to do the same.

The two states are the only ones in the country to allocate some delegates proportionally by congressional district, which in 2020 allowed President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to each secure one delegate in states that were otherwise won by the other – Biden in Nebraska and Trump in Maine.

But in early April, Trump, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and other prominent Republicans endorsed a legislative measure that would change Nebraska’s allocation of Electoral College votes to a Trump-favorable, winner-take-all system. The state currently awards one vote for each of the state’s three congressional districts and then two for the overall winner of the state.

Now, Democratic leaders in Maine, the only other state in the nation that awards electoral votes by congressional district, are indicating they’d make a similar change — effectively negating any advantage Trump would gain under the proposed reform in Nebraska.

“If Nebraska’s Republican Governor and Republican-controlled Legislature were to change their electoral system this late in the cycle in order to unfairly award Donald Trump an additional electoral vote, I think the Maine Legislature would be compelled to act in order to restore fairness to our country’s electoral system,” House Majority Leader Maureen Terry, a Democrat, said in a statement on Friday. “It is my hope and the hope of my colleagues in Maine that the Nebraska Republican Party decides not to make this desperate and ill-fated attempt to sway the 2024 election.”

Earlier this month, Nebraska Republicans failed to whip the necessary 33 votes to break a filibuster in its unicameral Senate despite a nationwide pressure campaign from far-right conservative radio host and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. As a result, the proposal failed to advance before the end of the legislative session, effectively killing the bill.

But last week, Pillen — who has already signaled he will call a special legislative session on property tax reform — said in a speech that he would not hesitate to call a special session for “other unfinished business,” which he said included reforming Nebraska to a winner-take-all system, with the key caveat that he would only do so if legislators had the votes.

So far, no special session has been officially called.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said Friday he is “happy” to debate former President Donald Trump, though did not specify as to when.

The comment was made during a one-on-one interview with radio host Howard Stern, who asked if the president had plans to debate his 2024 opponent.

“I am somewhere,” Biden responded, the first time he’s indicated he will debate Trump this election cycle. “I don’t know when. I’m happy to debate him.”

After Biden’s remark on Stern’s show on Sirius/XM, Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita responded on social media.

“Ok,” he wrote on X, “let’s set it up !”

Trump, who skipped all four Republican National Committee-sanctioned 2024 primary election debates and pulled out of one of his three debates with Biden in 2020, has urged Biden to participate in the three general debates scheduled for this fall.

However, the Biden campaign has expressed concern with the organization of these debates by the Commission on Presidential Debates, signaling that the nonpartisan group that has sponsored the events since the 1980s has been unclear about their ability to administer a “fair” debate with Trump.

In April 2022, the Republican National Committee also voted unanimously to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates.

During the interview, Biden became very personal with the host. The president ran through his life story, touching on how his stuttering affected his life.

“You realize how humiliating it is. So … it taught me to understand what other people are going through,” Biden said when referencing how his stutter helped make him more compassionate.

Biden shared how after the passing of his first wife and 1-year-old daughter, he had a fleeting suicidal thought.

“You don’t have to be crazy to commit suicide. If you’ve been at the top of a mountain, you think it’s never gonna be there again. And just a brief moment, I thought, ‘maybe I just go to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and jump.’ But I had two kids,” Biden said.

He became emotional when discussing the passing of his son Beau and his father.

On abortion, Biden assured Stern that if reelected, he would be able to get a majority in Congress to reinstate Roe v. Wade, the nationwide abortion guarantee that the Supreme Court overturned in 2022.

“I think there’s going to be a real lesson learned on … the MAGA Republican side of the aisle, because we’re going to see a whole hell of a lot of state referenda and they’re going to see they’re gonna want to restore it. And that’s going to be able to be done.”

At one point in the interview, Biden referred to Nixon as Trump, but corrected himself and referenced it as a “Freudian slip.”

He also repeatedly referenced speaking at the Gridiron Club this Saturday — when he meant to say the White House Correspondents Dinner. The Gridiron Club already took place in March, and Biden spoke at it.

“I’m doing the Gridiron dinner on a Saturday, right? And one of the things — a serious thing — I’m going to say at the Gridiron dinner is that, you know, paraphrasing, Jefferson said a choice between what we have and a free press, I’d pick a free press.”

He went on to accuse the press of not “speaking up” about Trump as much as they used to in the past.

“I haven’t figured it out yet. But I think it’s coming around. And I’m not blaming the press. I’m just saying. I think some of them are worried about attacking him; worried about taking him on.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration has determined that three military battalions with the Israel Defense Forces committed “gross human rights violations” against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank but will remain eligible for U.S. military aid regardless because of steps Israel says it’s taking to address the problem, ABC News has learned.

The administration assessment, which has not yet been made public and could change if Israel doesn’t take specific steps, was outlined in an undated letter by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to House Speaker Mike Johnson obtained by ABC News.

The U.S. determination “will not delay the delivery of any U.S. assistance and Israel will be able to receive the full amount appropriated by Congress,” Blinken wrote.

The allegations involving each of the units occurred before the Oct. 7 war began when Hamas attacked Israel. None of the cases involves operations against Hamas in Gaza or against Iran or its proxies.

Still, the decision is likely to roil critics of the Biden administration who say not enough is being done to hold Israel accountable for military operations in Gaza that have pushed the civilian population toward famine.

Issa Amro, a prominent Palestinian human rights activist who lives in the West Bank city of Hebron, said he was “disappointed” but not surprised by the U.S. decision.

The U.S. “is not doing concrete actions to reduce violence, to a minimum and to make peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” he told ABC News.

Administration officials counter that its process in reviewing human rights violations has been fair and that Israel was not given preferential treatment. They also note that it’s not uncommon for the U.S. to work with countries through a process known as “remediation” that can encourage foreign countries to weed out bad actors within their militaries.

“Each of these situations is different, and we have to do our best to collect the facts and follow the facts and that’s what we’re doing,” Blinken told reporters Monday at a press briefing when pressed for details on the U.S. review.

Under a federal measure known as the Leahy Law, the U.S. military is required to withhold weapons, training and other military assistance to any foreign military unit that commits gross human rights abuses.

The law, however, allows an exception for countries that have taken steps “to bring to justice the responsible members of the unit,” according to Blinken’s letter.

According to a person familiar with the process, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that hasn’t been made public, the U.S. and Israel also have a special agreement that requires the U.S. to consult with the Israelis before making any decisions related to the Foreign Assistance Act.

The person said those consultations with Israel remain ongoing and that if a military unit is found not to take “satisfactory remediation or accountability measures,” U.S. aid would then be restricted.

Overall, five units — three military and two civilian — were under review for human rights violations. According to Blinken’s letter, four have undergone proper remediation steps.

Israel also has “acknowledged” that another IDF battalion had engaged in “conduct inconsistent” with Israel’s rules. As a result, the unit was transferred from the West Bank to the Golan Heights in 2022, Blinken noted.

That description matches the Netzah Yehuda battalion, established for ultra-orthodox Jewish men.

“The Israeli government has presented new information regarding the status of the unit and we will engage on identifying a path to effective remediation for this unit,” Blinken wrote.

“But this will have no impact on our support for Israel’s ability to defend itself against Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, or other threats,” he assured Johnson, a staunch supporter of Israel who helped push a foreign aid bill through Congress this week.

Blinken noted that no other units were found in violation of the Leahy Law.

The secretary spoke with top Israeli officials this week following reports by Axios and ProPublica that the U.S. planned to “sanction” IDF units.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would fight the Biden administration on such a move, calling it a “moral low.”

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(WASHINGOTN) — The Biden administration has determined that three military battalions with the Israel Defense Forces committed “gross human rights violations” against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank but will remain eligible for U.S. military aid regardless because of steps Israel says it’s taking to address the problem, ABC News has learned.

The administration assessment, which has not yet been made public, was outlined in an undated letter by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to House Speaker Mike Johnson obtained by ABC News.

The U.S. determination “will not delay the delivery of any U.S. assistance and Israel will be able to receive the full amount appropriated by Congress,” Blinken wrote.

The allegations involving each of the units occurred before the Oct. 7 war began when Hamas attacked Israel. None of the cases involves operations against Hamas in Gaza or against Iran or its proxies.

Still, the decision is likely to roil critics of the Biden administration who say not enough is being done to hold Israel accountable for military operations in Gaza that have pushed the civilian population toward famine.

Administration officials counter that its process in reviewing human rights violations has been fair and that Israel was not given preferential treatment. They also note that it’s not uncommon for the U.S. to work with countries through a process known as “remediation” that can encourage foreign countries to weed out bad actors within their militaries.

“Each of these situations is different, and we have to do our best to collect the facts and follow the facts and that’s what we’re doing,” Blinken told reporters Monday at a press briefing when pressed for details on the U.S. review.

Under a federal measure known as the Leahy Law, the U.S. military is required to withhold weapons, training and other military assistance to any foreign military unit that commits gross human rights abuses.

The law, however, allows an exception for countries that have taken steps “to bring to justice the responsible members of the unit,” according to Blinken’s letter.

According to a person familiar with the process, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that hasn’t been made public, the U.S. and Israel also have a special agreement that requires the U.S. to consult with the Israelis before making any decisions related to the Foreign Assistance Act. The person said those consultations remain ongoing.

Overall, five units — three military and two civilian — were under review for human rights violations. According to Blinken’s letter, four have undergone proper remediation steps.

Israel also has “acknowledged” that another IDF battalion had engaged in “conduct inconsistent” with Israel’s rules. As a result, the unit was transferred from the West Bank to the Golan Heights in 2022, Blinken noted.

That description matches the Netzah Yehuda battalion, established for ultra-orthodox Jewish men.

“The Israeli government has presented new information regarding the status of the unit and we will engage on identifying a path to effective remediation for this unit,” Blinken wrote.

“But this will have no impact on our support for Israel’s ability to defend itself against Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, or other threats,” he assured Johnson, a staunch supporter of Israel who helped push a foreign aid bill through Congress this week.

Blinken noted that no other units were found in violation of the Leahy Law.

The secretary spoke with top Israeli officials this week following reports by Axios and ProPublica that the U.S. planned to “sanction” IDF units.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would fight the Biden administration on such a move, calling it a “moral low.”

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